Camelyena

I've been off for a few days and I'm back a little more refreshed than when I left and definitely ready to get stuck into the pile of things I now have to catch up on.
The 'Twisted Creatures' or the examples of 'Darwin's Worst Evolutionary Nightmare' continue unabated with the current animal being the Hyena. Matt and Phil have both completed their wonderful versions already.


Matt has nominated the Camel for the next animal for our respective treatments. I hope Matt and Phil won't mind that this little cheat will modify the two creatures into one submission. It also fits Illustration Friday's current topic of modify.

Mixing the body of the Camel with the head of the Hyena has come up with something truly bizarre - but there is something I like about it. With a bit more work I think this could easily work as one of the 'genetically modified' Podz creatures I worked on before I was a freelancer.

I guess it falls to me to nominate the next animal - unless I've been disqualified!
Next creature: Salamander

The Peacock

This is a piece I have done for another good friend's birthday. I was thinking of it as being a sort of companion piece for the illustration of Yggdrasil below.


I think peacocks are fascinating creatures... How they adapted such extreme plumage is one of those curious wonders of nature.

Despite how amazing they are, I developed a bit of a hatred of peacocks whilst my wife and I were looking for a place to get married. We looked at a place in Bigglewade where there was a beautiful ornamental garden that had a license. The gardens had a few resident peacocks and the weird calling noise they produce rang out all around in an other-worldly sort of way - I remember ground mist that day, but that could have been added in my mind for effect. There was path that you were supposed to follow around the gardens, but along the way, one of the peacocks took a bit of a dislike to us and hissed and rattled it's tail. We turned and fled (literally) and decided it was perhaps better to get married elsewhere!

We must attract them, as this is not the only time we've been accosted in a public garden by a strange old bird.

Science Fiction Theatre

I'm truly finding it hard to be productive and efficient at the moment.


I've got plenty to do - mainly preparation for the upcoming Bristol Comic Convention so heaven knows why I've been fiddling around with this piece this afternoon!

Valentine's Day

Did this for my lovely wife's Valentine's Day card.


There's not much to say except that really.

Other than this marks the first whole year of being self employed as an illustrator...

That's cause to celebrate!

Page Two Teaser

I've just finished inking this panel from page two of the Judge Dredd sample script.


For some reason this brings back memories from my days of night-clubbing whilst at university.

My favourite character in this panel is the tool who's vogue-ing centre frame.

Judge Dredd - finished one!

I finished inking page one:


I finished colouring page one:


Judge Dredd © 2008 Rebellion Developments/2000AD

To finish the whole script in the timeframe I need to, I'll have to keep to a strict working ROUTINE.

Illustration Friday - "Sail"

How the hell does this qualify as "sail"??? that's what you're asking...





These were some storyboards I did recently as a tryout for a media company... I reworked thumbnails from a storyboard for an advert that didn't get made. I had to keep quiet about these for a month or so but I think it's ok to show them now.

The idea was that this was the battle of Waterloo (or a pastiche of that battle) and the two generals/leaders rode out and had a bit of a verbal slanging match - much to their men's entertainment. Obviously the side that won was fuelled by some form of dutch courage (the beer that was trying to be marketed) or maybe that was simply the incentive or the spoils of victory...

Put simply, the generals assailed each other... or perhaps the Duke of Wellington ("There's only one way to win a war, Shout, Shout and SHOUT AGAIN! MEEAHH!" [Blackadder the Third]) assailed himself on Napoleon... Yeah, tenuous, I know.

The b&w panels took about 8hrs in total, hence why some of them a pretty rough, the final (larger) panel is a tidied up version of the soldiers done to show a more 'glossy' option for the ad company to sell their concept to the client and probably took another three of four to complete.

Illustration Friday - "Poof"

On Saturday they were going to turn on The Large Hadron Collider. This is a massive particle accelerator which will be used to observe and study the smallest particles known to man...

There is some talk that they are going to use it to try to recreate the circumstances of the big bang!

There are mixed views of what actually turning it on will mean. With the scientists looking forward to seeing some results from the $ 8billion investment and other parties proclaiming that the world will be sucked into an artificially produced black hole...



I don't know much about the physics of this, but it sounds like a crazy sci-fi movie where these well-meaning boffins came up with an idea and just did it. You know, after realizing that they could do it, they didn't actually stop to consider if they actually should... and now we're all gonna die horribly or in this case vanish in a puff/poof of logic.

For more info on the LHC simply search 'Large Hadron Collider' into any good search engine... in some news reports it looks like they've postponed the apocalypse until 21st October now!

Dredd (tablet inked)

Brian Bolland now uses his computer for inking and colouring...
I've got a sneaking suspicion that the very popular Boo Cook also works digitally.

I thought I'd give digital inking a shot as an experiment.



I'm not sure I'm happy with the results - the gains made are easily outweighed by the fact that the inking is a little soulless. Put simply, I don't like it - I'm off now to do things as they were intended - man, paper and pen!

< for Illustration Friday, I've canned this approach! >

"Enough" of these Creatures?

These are the rough paintings I did to get the PODZ project going, well before there was any alien element, there were these unlikely animal hybrids... you might have seen the Poison Tree Panda before.

©Marketing and Promotional Services Ltd.

I'm short of new work as I've just completed some stuff I'm not allowed to show. In any spare moments I have had, I've been working on a Judge Dredd sample script that I'll be drawing up over the coming week or so.

I hate to leave the blog stagnant for too long without there being some change at the top and I hope these are enough to keep it moving!

Illustration Friday - "Foggy"

Rainy, foggy, ah, sue me... the background is quite foggy though!

This piece was done to accompany a story in a magazine. Not my usual style I know, but if that's what people want to pay me to produce - who am I to argue?

Illustration Friday - "Sour"

Quick digital sketch for the topic on Illustration Friday this week.


Who's a sour puss?

Illustration Friday - "Fierce"

This was another of those PODZ creatures... This one was part crocodile but mainly kangaroo. Stupid really. I always thought this one was quite fierce though, so there's my link to Illustration friday's topic this week.

"Scruffy looking nerf-herder!"

"Who's scruffy lookin?"
He was so cool...
Pirates, have hoards even space pirates!!

Freeing My Bonds

A hoard of Bonds?


James Brawn

Double O Saving

Doublet Status

Eye Spy

Bond of Marriage

Bawned, Jaymsh Bawned
the original and still the best!

My Puns aren't great, but some of the others I had were worse - Double O Suaving, Oh, Oh Heaven and Sleak Rat Agent for example were awful. Have a go at coming up with witty alternatives for 007's names, it's not as easy as you think.

I'm really happy with Sean, Daniel and Pierce. These are all quick Photoshop efforts, I did colour for Sean and Daniel as they are the book ends for the character and I'm just playing at the moment, trying to gauge how successful/commercial these things might be.

QI Gang - Delicate Distortions

Alan Davies, probably best known as Jonathan Creek... I've heard that there's a new TV special coming later in the year, that could be worth a watch.


Phil Jupitus, another regular on QI and also the other team leader on Nevermind the Buzzcocks with Bill Bailey.


Jimmy Carr, is everywhere, perhaps he's omnipresent, 8 out of 10 cats, Quiz of the year (success down to Noel Fielding and Russell Brand I think there) and is also a regular on QI.

All of these guys also have great stand-up careers, a common feature of stand-up of course is that all important punchline!

Bit of a theme here with these caricatures, I'm not sure about the Alan Davies, but I like the Jimmy Carr... They're pretty quick to do in Photoshop to this sort of standard, but should I pursue this direction any further? With no work coming in, things are pretty concerning.

I think my caricatures aren't that extreme, more sort of delicate distortions but not portraits.

QI Gang sounds like the name of a Jedi to me...

Stephen Fry

A much loved English treasure, one of the smartest blokes around, host of the brilliant quizshow QI...



He's a real renaissance man, our Stephen Fry... Comedy series credits too long to mention, best selling books, films, serious documentaries and quizmaster. He's got a great website too.

He reads the Harry Potter Audiobooks - but he'd have been perfect for Dumbledore in the films!

This is the second of my caricatures done roughly in photoshop, just trying it out really... watch out for Alan Davies, Phil Jupitus and possibly Jimmy Carr coming soon! All of them deliver punchlines! Also, see Bill Bailey from earlier this week!

Bill Bailey

One of the funniest blokes around... and he was the guest on Desert Island Discs on Radio4 last week.


If you're not familiar with Bill, Black Books, Spaced, QI and Nevermind the Buzzcocks will help you out of your dark days!

Check out Bill's website too. The faster html site is good and the flash-rich site is supremely silly - the choice is yours!

Bill doesn't really rely on the old punchline too much and I suppose that is a pretty thin link for the Illustration Friday topic this week.

This is a quick digital caricature done in photoshop - I'm not sure whether it's worth finishing or not.

Illustration Friday - "Forgotten"

This week, it seems, that I have forgotten how to draw.

I was going to spout some old cobblers about getting back to a more primitive kind of art, really feeling my roots and trying to express the inner child still within me... but nah, I've just been drawing like a drunken monkey this week, my ideas haven't been much better either.

Illustration Friday - "Baby"

You'd better pray that this baby never comes to visit you...

Seemed like a brilliant movie title until I looked up on IMDb, there was a movie called the PACIFIER and it starred Vin Diesel, I think I'd rather see a film with this baby in it!